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Local Man Ruins Everything by The Wonder Years

This is me with Hussam, a 15-year-old Syrian refugee living in a shelter with his mother and brother in the Azraq refugee camp. 

Hussam learned to speak English in three months with the help of a CARE volunteer (after just three months of study, he is basically fluent) and excels in school. He told me his family is “split in four parts.” His father and one brother sought asylum in Germany; another brother got a scholarship to university in Turkey, and his two married sisters are still in Syria. He hasn’t seen his sisters, brother, or father in more than a year.

When I asked Hussam why he and his family left Syria, he said, “My school was bombed.” I asked if he was in the school at the time; he nodded and began to cry. I asked him if he was injured and he said, “No, but my best friend was killed.”

Most of the refugees I met in Syria have photographs of friends and family stored only on phones. Later in our conversation, Hussam took out his phone and showed me some pictures of his dad and brother in Germany, and I asked if he had a picture of his best friend. He said “Yes,” and sorted through the pictures for a moment before handing me the phone.

It showed a picture of a dead adolescent boy, his face disfigured by trauma. “That is the only picture I have,” he said.

Hussam and I spent a long time talking about the joys of reading–how reading about travel and adventure is a way of going on adventures even if you can’t in real life–and he also told me he loved writing stories. I asked him if he wanted to be a writer when he grew up. 

“No,” he said. “I want to go to university and study to become an engineer.”

“Why an engineer?” I asked.

me in December

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